


Sleep, Sweet Summer Child

by NoOneFrUkingCares



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Hot, Kind Criminal, Late Night Conversations, Late at Night, M/M, Mosquitoes Need to Die, Nighttime, Nutella, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Sleep doesn't even look like a word anymore, Sleepiness, Summer Love, it's really hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoOneFrUkingCares/pseuds/NoOneFrUkingCares
Summary: Oh Sehun never asked for any of this.The insomnia that’s ten times worse than usual, this little house in the middle of nowhere, the fact that no one installed an ac and mosquitoes being the only things finding him attractive. Or the random dude in his house eating Nutella.Maybe it's the heat, or maybe he's finally gone insane, but maybe this would be the first thing bestowed upon him by the asshole up there that's actually something that he would like in the end.





	1. 2:14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Prompt Petal:** 159
> 
> **Author's Note:** I honestly don't know how I managed to do this. This is my first fest and it was like a boatload of me stressing out (unnecessarily) because I had found this like right before claiming ended and I wanted to do it because seasons are just so beautiful and the prompts were all so beautiful and I lived and breathed for the **AESTHETIC** of the whole thing. So like the events in the story, most of it (like a good 89%) was all written in the am hours and yeah. 
> 
> Again a huge thanks to my [sweetheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extensive_scribe) for keeping me from going insane and reading this to make sure it actually looked good and didn't have the 102349576 different grammar errors I usually don't see (because I never learned english grammar). Love you!

Oh Sehun is three seconds away from collapsing of exhaustion and about 5 hours away from actually going to sleep.

All the bugs in the world seemed to have gathered outside this little house in an attempt to blast Sehun with the sound of an unending chorus, dedicated on worming its way into his brain until he quite frankly wants to kill something. And it’s just too hot. God, why hasn’t anyone blessed him with enough money to buy an ac and then install it in his room?

All seven fans are all going at top speed, surrounding him in an attempt to cool his skin down enough that he can sleep. He’s nearly completely naked. His bed has been stripped until it’s nothing more than a hard mattress and a pillow. But unless he manages to levitate so he’s surrounded by air instead of sticking to the hot, sweaty cloth that’s overheating him, there’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep. At this point, the fans are doing nothing but blowing hot air and adding to the bug symphony.

Sehun finally gives up and opens his eyes, facing the huge, glaring red of his little clock, accusing in its state with the bright numbers mocking him. 2:07 am. Might as well just go downstairs and like get something to eat, or better yet, just sleep in the fridge. It’s not like it’s going to ruin his electricity bill even more than how higher it currently will be. Sehun gets off the bed with a bit too much eagerness, giving a silent sigh of relief at the removal of stickiness against his skin, even though the temperature does rise about 4 degrees now that he doesn’t have all the fans blowing at him.

Instead of focusing on how much more miserable he is compared to when he was lying down, Sehun goes around to shut off all the fans and unplug them from the safety hazard of wires he had made, seeing how it’s a lot easier to just sleep in the fridge. God, the electricity bill is going to be painful, but it can’t be more painful than what’s going on right now. For not the first time since summer started, Sehun wishes that he’s at home in his overpriced but thankfully air-conditioned apartment instead of this lousy little house in a summer town about 5 hours away that barely had enough room for him to stretch properly in.

Sehun relishes the slightly cool floorboards as he makes his way downstairs, opting to go slipperless because he had lost them a few hours ago after throwing his blanket onto the floor, already feeling sweat collect together to start rolling down his chest and all the crevices that he didn’t know could sweat but apparently can. Usually his insomnia doesn’t act up this badly, but that was at home when he wasn’t surrounded by the fires of hell. Besides, it’s a lot easier to power through it when you’re warm and snug in your blankets during the middle of winter. Here, all it does is make it impossible for him to sleep.

The downstairs area is slightly cooler, and if Sehun wasn’t so paranoid about the stupid mosquitoes that decide that he’s an all you can eat buffet, he would’ve long had just given up and just moved his bed to the floor by the fridge where the window might blow in some wind once in awhile, and he could just open the fridge if he was truly desperate. But no.

And now he has a better reason for not just sleeping in the kitchen, because there’s a dark figure sitting on the kitchen floor, dressed in all black, a bloody wound on his forehead, and eating Nutella out of the jar with a spoon.

Now Sehun is a rational person. He doesn’t like jumping to conclusions and likes to try to thinking about things rationally. But now, in this obscure position, there’s nothing he can think besides three words: what the fuck.

There’s too much to handle, which is why his head probably goes “hey let’s focus on one thing at a time so we don’t overheat.” And for some reason, Sehun chooses to focus on the Nutella. Probably because it’s the most familiar and safe thing in this situation. But where did this dude get the Nutella from? The one small convenience store in this town doesn’t stock it. The nearest place big enough to stock it is a good hour drive away. It’s not Sehun’s. He cut Nutella out of his diet after an unfortunate incident involving Baekhyun and a small remote controlled poodle. The intruder is frozen with the spoon en route to his mouth, and Sehun can clearly see that he hasn’t made a dent in the thing, barely a fifth of the way through. He clearly just started a few minutes ago, and probably did so after he took a seat on Sehun’s kitchen floor. So why the fuck did this dude decide to start eating Nutella in his house and where did he even get it from in the first place?

“I can explain.”

Sehun keeps staring.

“Okay, no I can’t.”

“Why the fuck are you in my house at 2 am?” Sehun is amazed that he managed to say even that much, especially since the stranger is now peeling himself off the floor, placing the spoon inside the jar and getting to his feet. He wonders briefly if he should grab a weapon. He’ll probably faint because of the heat long before he could do anything useful with it though.

“Look, it’s a long story, and how about I just leave an-”

“If you don’t explain to me exactly why you’re here, I’m going to call the police.” The stranger shrugs and plops back onto the floor, stretching out his legs and patting the floor next to him, inviting Sehun to sit. Sehun feels that the stranger is being a bit too nonchalant about all of this, seeing how he’s opening the Nutella again, and disregarding Sehun’s presence. Maybe it’s just because Sehun is reassured about absolutely nothing and hates how on edge he feels. But he shouldn’t be counted out just because he’s hot and sweaty and feels like he’s going to die, Sehun can be dangerous sometimes.

“Okay. Oh, by the way, I don’t really like what you did with the place. You don’t actually need this much insect repellent to keep the mosquitoes away. It smells like a bad perfumery in here.”

Sehun wasn’t going to just sit here and get insulted like this in his own house. He scowls as he lowers himself to the ground, a few feet away from the intruder instead of next to him, not giving him that little bit of satisfaction. As soon as he sits he can feel his skin glue onto the kitchen tiles like a bad magnet, proving that the intruder was probably an asshole with an agenda to hurt him all along, and really hopes that he doesn’t want to kill him.

“Look, if it doesn’t smell like a perfumery then there’ll be mosquitoes everywhere. I’ve gotten bitten so many times that I look like an overused pincushion. If you want to kill the mosquitoes a different way then you’re welcome to, but this is how I’m dealing.”

“Whoa. Chill, no need to be so grumpy.” The stranger holds his hands up like he’s trying to proclaim his innocence and Sehun has to remind himself to calm down. It’s too hot to be angry at anyone.

“But why are you here? And why are you eating Nutella in the middle of my kitchen?”

“Oh so one of my friends found out recently that old man Moon a few houses down was hoarding Nutella, and since I’m such a nice guy, I decided to relieve him of a few jars.” He holds up the jar and then stares at it for a few seconds, thinking over something. “Sorry, did you want any? I know I’m rude by not offering, but if you wa-”

“No. Why can’t you just answer my question properly?” Sehun is exhausted. More importantly, he doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be at home, dealing with the leaky faucet that their super’s never going to fix, the way his bed creaks too much, the loud neighbors next door that do not know the concept of privacy, and the beautiful blessed ac, pinnacle of invention from mankind.

“Because you might not like my answer and I rather not go to jail again. The cops have a bit of a personal grudge against me, I think it’s because Soo loves me and expresses it differently, but yeah. Why are you nearly naked though? It’s not that hot.”

It’s not that hot? It’s not that hot?!?!?!?! IT’S NOT THAT HOT!?!?!??!?!?

“My skin is three seconds away from melting off my flesh and you say it’s not that hot? How in hell are you still wearing a full suit of clothes?”

“Hold on, let me check something.” The intruder puts down the Nutella and slides up to Sehun. Sehun eyes him warily. He rather not die in his mickey mouse boxers that were a gag gift from Jongin about five years ago, but it seems like that might end up being his fate.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He says as he puts a hand on Sehun’s head, feeling his forehead. Even though Sehun knows he’s a big person, the way the man is sitting up on his heels and checking his temperature makes him feel unnecessarily small.

“I’m not sick, if that’s what you’re checking for. I only get sick during winter and that’s a few seasons away.”

“Hm.” He hums uninterestedly before scooting past Sehun to the fridge, reaching in and grabbing something. Instead of offering Sehun his own food, he pulls out a neatly folded up blue blanket???

“Here. It’s definitely not healthy for you, but it should cool you down a bit.” He scoots back, wobbling side to side like a little penguin, before reaching Sehun and draping it around his shoulders.

As soon as the cold blanket touched his body, it was as if someone had given him a sneak peek of heaven. It was just so cold and if Sehun wasn’t solid, he would’ve melted into a puddle of contentedness. There was a tiny part of his brain that was aware that he shouldn’t be won over so easily, but being relieved of his misery was just too good.

“Here. Since you won’t have Nutella, take some bread and banana milk.” Cool plastic is being shoved into his hands before he could react, and Sehun does actually let out an involuntary sigh of relief as he touches the cool objects. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that the intruder is feeding him his own food, but rips though the plastic as quickly as he can.

“Feel better?” The man gives him another once over, reminding Sehun a bit too much like his mom diagnosing him with one look, and Sehun nods, feeling the cool liquid travel down his throat, sating the burning shouting for a sacrifice.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He gives Sehun another nod before sitting back in his original seat, picking up the tub of Nutella to continue consuming. Sehun watches how he nimbly scoops out a little Nutella before placing the spoon in his mouth, slowly licking it off as he pulls the spoon out again, before sticking it back into the tub and repeating the process. It’s nearly hypnotising, the slow repetition, and the way the light flashes off of his metal spoon and the rings piled up on his long and slender fingers.

“So when did this become your house? No one was here last week.” The intruder asks, waving the spoon about, a bit like a baton.

“It’s been in my family for generations. I just only come down here during summers.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. The intruder’s dark eyes don’t even blink as he takes it in, licking the bit of Nutella off his lips slowly as if consuming it with the information.

“Why?”

“I dunno. I have a place in the city, but it’s kinda like habit to just come down and work in the bookshop for the summer and then go back to my normal life. My parents always took me down here during the summer and now I’m just coming down here alone.”

“And we just thought that this house was abandoned really nicely.”

Sehun shakes his head. God, the blanket was a bit too hot now, the heat having sapped it of the cool and leaving it as nothing more than another regular blanket.

“Why do you know all of this? Do you often trespass into my house?”

The intruder stands up, ignoring Sehun’s question once again as Sehun shrugs the blanket off his shoulders. It was soaked in his sweat and starting to become a lot more of another sticky piece of cloth than a piece of cool heaven.

He walks over to the fridge and pulls out another blanket, draping it over Sehun again in the uncharacteristic kindness already displayed several times, folding the used one to stick back into the cold box.

“You don’t have to say trespass. I prefer unannounced visits.” The intruder quirks up a corner of his lips in a smirk, and despite his best efforts, (which weren’t very good at all,) Sehun snorts.

It bursts out of him in such a way that he’s surprised, but the intruder looks smug as if that was his intention in the first place. This up and down drift of his excitement level has Sehun feeling so terribly tired and awake at the same time, his body confused in a way that has never happened before, barring that fiasco in college, thank you very much, and after finally not sweating like a steam roasted pig for a good amount of time, he actually feels the urge to sleep.

“But yeah. You have a nice house and it’s a nice place to like just rest for a bit, have a roof over your head and stuff. We don’t like sleep in your bed or anything,” he hastens to add at Sehun’s slowly increasing glare, “but it’s like a safe place to hide and regroup.”

“You keep saying we. Who are you referring to?”

He shifts a bit and smiles uncomfortably, clearly trying to dodge the question. “Um. You need to be a level five friend to unlock my tragic backstory.”

“Well then, do I need to be a level five friend to know why you have that head wound?” He tilts his head slightly, as if just realising that he had the wound in the first place, despite the fact that there is dried blood all over his forehead.

“Ah.” His hand automatically goes up to touch it and Sehun really has to work to keep himself from slapping it away, a whole lifetime of training Lu to stop irritating his cuts jumping into action. When did they move close enough that he could potentially reach over and just slap his hand away from his face?

“Yeah, old man Moon isn’t exactly the nicest dude on the block. He also likes me about as much as you like the mosquitoes.” Thankfully, the intruder doesn’t touch his wound and potentially infect it more, and Sehun sighs, feeling like he’s going to need to get some first aid to help this kid, since clearly life was never his first priority. Sehun lets the blanket slide off his shoulders and stands up, kicking the few pieces of plastic that had covered his food into the corner, where he will probably never see them again.

“Where are you going?” As if it was a cat raising his hackles at the first sign of danger, Sehun feels the intruder tense up for the first time since they began and the instinct to soothe him rises up. Soothe him? An intruder that broke into his house? Sehun hasn’t wanted to soothe anything since that stray cat got hurt and was crying out in pain when he was six.

To remove the uncomfortable feeling of suddenly wanting to be too nice, Sehun slaps a fake smirk on his face, knowing that those things are impenetrable and there’s no way that it’ll set off any alarm bells.

“Well, I don’t want you dying in here. Don’t move.”

He shrugs, telling Sehun that he’s making no promises even as his shoulders tense up, and Sehun turns around, seeing as he can’t exactly do anything but just hope for the best.

The walk up is so much worse than the walk down. It’s as if with every step he takes, a thicker, hotter blanket of air is settling onto his shoulders, engulfing him and overwhelming him. He wonders if he’ll die, overtaken by heat as he heads for the little cabinet in the back of his room. All the work that the blankets had put in were gone, pushed off with the new addition of warmth just choking him, wrapping around like a slighted lover. But he can’t die just yet, there’s still dried blood and a very obviously open wound still on his intruder’s head.

Descending down is a new kind of relief. The heat that was suffocating him wasn’t completely gone, but the brunt of it lifts off him as soon as his feet touch the last step, and if he wasn’t so relieved and drained of energy, he might’ve just jumped for joy.

The intruder is still on the floor, one hand on the floor, body tensed like he was about to get up and run. The Nutella jar sits there unattended as he focuses on the swaying of the tree across the road from the kitchen door. It’s such a calm and peaceful sight that it almost convinces Sehun to stop and observe how the light of the full moon washes over his intruder, head tilted perfectly so that his wound is just out of sight. Sehun’s blanket is gone, which is a shame considering the fact that he was planning on using that to recover from his very near death experience.

“What did you do with it?” The intruder flinches so hard that he nearly jumps up, and his head snaps back so quickly that Sehun can hear the phantom crack of his spine, and feels really bad for his poor neck.

“With what?”

“The blanket, what else?”

“Oh.” The intruder’s visibly relaxing as they talk, the tension sinking out of his body as he closes his eyes for a few seconds, taking a moment to catch his thoughts. “I put it in the fridge because I didn’t know how long you would be gone.”

“Taking a long time to grab a first aid kit?” Sehun plops down as the stranger stretches over and pulls another blanket out of the fridge, probably a lot colder than the previous ones.

“You were being vague about that part.” Sehun shrugs off his complaints as another ice cold blanket is now in charge of temperature control over his body. God, whoever thought of this should win a Nobel prize.

“Okay, sit.” Sehun pats the floor in front of him as he pulls the cold blankets closer around him, hoping that this is the right tone for sounding commanding.

“What?” The intruder narrows his eyes and pulls his body back, acting as if they hadn’t spent so many uncounted minutes on this hard wooden floor together, slowly figuring out each other and the fact that they aren’t going to actually hurt anyone.

“I need to clean your wound, and if you want to still eat the Nutella while I do it, move closer.” Sehun unzips the first aid kit that he plopped next to him as if to demonstrate, pulling out the cotton balls and tweezers to make it know that he really doesn’t have any bad intentions.

“And why are you cleaning my wound for me?” Honestly, Sehun can’t take him seriously with a spoonful of Nutella in his mouth, no matter how much he might be trying to seem mysterious with the dark eyebags and lingering glare on his face.

“Just come here.” Even though he acts like he doesn’t want to, he still scoots over, and Sehun reaches up automatically to brush his hair out of the way, ready to examine the wound.

It’s barely still bleeding, and is actually quite a shallow cut, more like the loss of a few layers of skin than anything more serious. There’s also no significant amount of dirt or anything on it, which is good, meaning that it doesn’t have to be washed, just disinfected. Still, he should get it cleaned and bandaged because it’s not good to just expose it to the air like this, especially when his hair is falling over it every other second. It’s an easy fix, just wash off the dried blood, then clean, dress and bandage the wound and he should be fine.

Sehun smells a faint whiff of Nutella and then he makes the mistake of letting his eyes flick down barely a centimeter, but he’s staring straight into his intruder’s eyes and good god are they close.

There’s an awkward pause in which Sehun notes the way the intruder doesn’t seem surprised, eyes completely calm and with just the tiniest shine of the moonlight reflecting off, and Sehun wonders if he should stare into eyes more often, because his are some of the prettiest he’s ever seen.

“Ah, yeah, just move closer.” Sehun is definitely not blushing, and looking slightly away was only because he needed to cough, no way involving the intruder at all, no way.

“So what are you planning on doing?” His intruder smiles like how Baekhyun does whenever he happens upon a small weakness, a tidbit to tease with, and Sehun rolls his eyes, embarrassment completely gone in the face of this offence.

“I’m going to make sure you don’t end up dead on some random street corner because of infection.” Sehun pulls out the small bottle of antiseptic rubbing alcohol and the intruder makes a low pitched whine, reaching a note that Sehun never would’ve thought he was capable of reaching with that voice.

“But that hurts!” This dude who broke into his house and had apparently being doing so for the past who knows how many days, this dude is also whining at having his cut disinfected and pouting?

“I will pour this entire bottle on you.” The intruder stills after the threat, allowing Sehun to place the bottle down and head for the sink in the midst of his preparations.

“What are you doing?” No longer bothered by the fear of disinfectant, the intruder watches with ease in his eyes as Sehun wets a small hand towel that was lasted used when his mom had wiped his own blood off a scraped knee. Sehun wrings it out and resists the urge to toss it at him. God, he could probably hit his face dead on too, but he’s trying to treat an injury, not give the man a new one.

“You have blood all over your forehead that needs to be cleaned off. Come here.”

“What are you going to do?” Still, the intruder comes as he’s called, setting his Nutella down and strolling over to the sink as well. Hmm, he’s just slightly taller than Sehun, barely a full three centimetres, but for some reason that irritates Sehun just the slightest bit.

“Can you hold your bangs away? They’re annoying, you should just cut them off.” The intruder scoffs, his dark eye bags suddenly amplified with the shadows cast by his back to the window, and Sehun’s suddenly aware that this dude could probably kill him.

“But I look good in them.” He holds his hair away and whines, and Sehun removes that awareness real quick because there’s no way this man could harm him.

“Don’t I look good?” Sehun stares at him a bit longer. He has a face that seems perfect for modeling, and is adorable even with his dark eye bags, kinda like a panda. But it’s weird to over inflate someone’s ego.

“No, lean in.” Sehun tries not to focus on how the intruder pouts as he cups his jaw with one hand to start dabbing the blood off, rubbing in slightly circular motions. He has the sudden realisation that there’s a lot of blood relative to the wound when he has to rinse the cloth off a third time and wonders if there’s a vitamin pack that could replenish blood out there. But in what way was it ever his place to care about this intruder?

“Okay, go sit down.” There’s no more blood on the wound so Sehun thinks he’s done a pretty good job at washing most of it off, having taken great care to avoid the wound. That’s why it hurts his heart so when his intruder just lets his bangs flop right into the wound, but the smile he gets kinds heals it.

“Thanks doc, don’t know how I’d have done it without you.” He leans against the side of the counter like he’s trying to pick Sehun up in a shady bar, the temperature of the room is even the same, but Sehun shakes out the cloth with the last bits of blood on it, finding the whole situation ridiculous.

“Sit down. I’m not done with you yet.”

“What? You cleaned the blood off, isn’t that enough?” He follows Sehun as Sehun hangs the cloth up to dry, and then to where Sehun was pouring a glass of water for himself, acting a bit too much like an overgrown and annoying duckling. But he freezes when Sehun leads him straight back to the medical supplies in the middle of the floor and does not sit when Sehun does.

“Sit down, we’re not done.”

“Why? You don't have to.”

He sits down after Sehun shakes the alcohol bottle threateningly at him, but starts whining again as soon as Sehun uncaps the bottle and reaches for a cotton ball with his tweezers.

“I’ve never died before, I don’t think I need it.” Even if the intruder looks a bit queasy at the prospect of having his wound cleaned, Sehun isn’t going to just back down like this.

“Well too bad, I’m not going to let you take your chances.” Sehun wets the cotton ball and raised it up, and the stranger looks about three seconds away from running, eyes locked on the unassuming piece of cotton like it was a weapon. But he doesn’t move as Sehun gently brushes his hair out of the way again and starts cleaning the dried blood right around his wound, face all twisted like it actually hurts.

“I’ve been in fights that hurt less than this.”

“I haven’t even touched the actual cut yet, stop being a baby about this.” Sehun snaps, arm already tired from the way he’s holding the intruder’s hair out of his way and the intruder opens his eyes from where he was squeezing them shut like it hurt, and bores into his soul.

“Fine, but this position is uncomfortable. Can I like lie down or something?” It’s uncomfortable for him? All he’s doing is leaning slightly forwards, if anyone should be complaining about uncomfortable it should be him.

“Fine. How do you want to do this then?” Sehun nearly throws the cotton down onto the floor just to prove a point, but that’s a waste of a perfectly usable cotton ball. He watches as the hair immediately flops right back into the wound, the tips grazing just the middle of it, and is suddenly thankful that he didn’t start actually cleaning it because that would’ve been a waste of his time.

“I was thinking more of a we don’t do this at all.” Sehun’s irritation must’ve shown on his face, because the intruder’s fake persuasive smile slips off and he sighs, as if resorting to a terrible backup plan.

“Don’t complain, but I’m either going to do it like this or not at all.” The stranger shoves his spoon into the Nutella and caps it, before getting up and heading back to the fridge. He puts it in and pulls out yet another different blanket (how many were in there?) and comes back over, not meeting Sehun’s eyes. Sehun can’t tell if he should be really mad or really annoyed when the stranger drapes the blanket over Sehun’s legs and then lies down, head square in his lap.

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Feel free to stroke my hair after torturing me, it’ll soothe the pain.” The intruder winks and Sehun does a mixture of both moods, and ends up with the compromise of a huff of disbelief.

“You better not complain anymore then.” Sehun doesn’t focus on how the noncommittal sound the intruder makes vibrates into his soul or how he closes his eyes as soon as Sehun moves the hair away again, gently pressing it against his scalp. It flops over and doesn’t try to flop back when Sehun lets go of it, and he begrudgingly admits in his head that this was actually a pretty smart move. He’s happy, Sehun’s life is easier, this is actually a pretty good idea.

Despite all his moaning and groaning earlier, the intruder doesn’t complain when Sehun actually cleans the wound and dresses it, only wrinkling his face and letting out slight hisses when Sehun presses down too hard, a model patient. He can easily put on some medicine and then carefully bandage the wound with some gauze, and before he knows it, he’s already capping the alcohol and cleaning up.

The intruder lies there so peacefully after Sehun’s done, eyes closed and face softened that Sehun wonders if he had actually managed to fall asleep. Gently, as to not disturb him, Sehun brushes another tuft of hair out of his eyes and then runs his hand through his hair. Unlike his own, which is like three different kinds of gross and sweaty, the intruder’s hair feels about as soft and fluffy as it looks, unmatted and shining slightly in the moonlight. He’s actually pretty good looking, once you get past the breaking in and thievery.

As if he had said it out loud, the intruder’s eyes open and he stares up into Sehun’s, a cattish smile growing over his lips the longer he looks.

“What?” Sehun demands, feeling conscious of everything now on his face.

“You’re the best person at stroking hair that I’ve ever met.” Sehun notes that he is still doing so and takes his hand out, and the intruder whines low in his throat again, this time sounding less like an offended cat.

“Why? That felt good.”

“Get off, you’re heavy.” The intruder wheedles and whines a bit more, but eventually sits up again, taking the now very warm blanket with him. God, it’s hot.

“Everything feel alright now?” Sehun asks when the stranger is tucking the two folded blankets back into the fridge to pull out another one, and eagerly holds a hand out for it. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t let go of it once more, walking around to drape it over Sehun for him.

“Well, I don’t know.” He sits down next to Sehun and instantly the flash of concern disappears when he sticks out his bottom lip in an incredible pout and leans towards Sehun. “It hurts, kiss it better?”

Sehun rolls his eyes. God, what is this man? “No.”

The intruder whines, a high pitch slowly rising from a low part in his throat, that quickly tapers off when he gets a gleam in his eye. Sehun has seen that gleam too many times, and does not like the effects at all.

“Fine.” Instead of backing down, the intruder leans over and kisses Sehun’s forehead, before giving him a smile and leaning over to the fridge, toppling like one of those punchable inflatable dolls that don’t fall. Why did he kiss Sehun’s forehead? Sehun’s so disgusting and sweaty and everything that not even he would’ve kissed his own forehead. He thinks in disgust about how weird the man is, in an attempt to ignore the gentle tingling spreading from his forehead and the way his heart warms the right way.

The intruder reaches back into the fridge and pulls out the Nutella, going back to eating, this time a lot closer to Sehun than he was before. If he just moved slightly over, he would be brushing up against him, but it’s too hot for that.

“How did you do that?” It’s such a quick mumble that Sehun isn’t even completely sure that he said it, but his intruder stares at him expectantly, mouth clamped over a spoonful of Nutella.

“Do what?”

“The bandaging and medical stuff. How are you like so experienced with it?”

“I’m not. I just know the basics because my friend injures himself very easily, and once you’ve bandaged a wound 100 times, you kinda know how it goes.”

A yawn fights its way up and Sehun doesn’t bother to conceal it, feeling a sort of calmness in his mind that would hopefully finally let him sleep. But he’s still far too hot, his body not letting him rest even if his mind had already given up control, and he can’t just sleep on the floor.

“Tired?” Sehun nods his head, feeling the weight of his eyelids again in full force, pushing harder than it had been minutes earlier. But no matter how much he wants to close them and sleep, first he has to go upstairs and get into bed and the prospect of doing that is literally the last thing he would want to do before sleeping.

“Yeah. But it’s still too hot and I don’t want to sleep on the floor.” The intruder frowns, and slides straight into Sehun’s personal space with a slight shuffle. He’s too close, too warm, and Sehun’s too tired to protest when he reaches forwards and gently pets Sehun’s head and Sehun’s eyes gently flutter shut.

“Then go to your bed and sleep there.” The commanding words are literally the furthest thing from his tone and the last thing Sehun would hear, sounds blurred by his gentle voice and gestures.

“It’s too hot there.” Even to his own ears Sehun sounds like he’s whining, but this sudden wave has washed over him so suddenly that it’s pulling him down and he really can’t think of a way to escape. It’ll suck when he has to peel his skin off the concrete tiles in the morning, but he could care less if he just gets to lie down and close his eyes.

“Why is it too hot?” The hand that was apparently more or less propping him up disappears, and Sehun nearly nose-plants into his intruder’s chest before he surprisingly catches himself and straightens up. The sleep clogging his eyes slips off slightly and Sehun feels none of the effects from just seconds ago as he anchors onto the nearest safe point, because he can’t fall asleep in the kitchen.

“I don’t have ac and it’s like a sauna up there.” Sehun jerks his head towards the stairs, trying his hardest to not look away from the intruder. He’s going to crash hard now that he’s apparently finally hit the point of no return, but if he just keeps on focusing on his intruder, maybe he’ll be able to postpone it until he’s in the bookstore and can take advantage of the little reading couch and ac, and pass out when there’s no one around.

“Why can’t you get ac?”

“Too expensive. I run the bookstore during the summer, do I sound like I’m made of money with the amount of people that go to the bookstore in the summer?” The intruder doesn’t respond, just looks curiously at Sehun while he eats, and grabbing for something now that he’s no longer speaking, Sehun watches him eat, repeating the slow and gentle motion, small scoop, placing into the mouth, pulling the clean spoon out, hypnotic in its calmness. Then, it wouldn’t be so bad to just gently lean forwards and maybe feel the spoon, try seeing how it feels to repeat it so systematically, and Sehun’s head hits his intruder’s hand and he snaps back again, too awake once more.

“Hey, I think you really need to go to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep here and I can’t go upstairs to sleep because it’s too hot there. I’ll be fine, just talk to me til morning and then I can sleep in the bookstore.” The intruder shakes his head and puts his Nutella down, heading for the refrigerator. Sehun feels his brain shake off the new wave of sleep when he sees the intruder pull out another blanket and he reaches for his blanket to hand back to him. It’s now a heap on the floor, even though Sehun doesn’t have a single clue when it ended up there. Ah well, it’s not like that matters too much when he’s sweating through the blankets almost as quickly as he gets them.

But instead of draping it over Sehun again like normal, the intruder unfolds the blanket and lays it on the floor, spread lengthwise as he holds onto the other blanket.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you sleep. If you’re sleeping on the blanket, you’re not sleeping on the floor.” Sehun rolls his eyes, about 10 different reasons all coming to mind about why he doesn’t want to do that, but then his intruder gives him a glare and all of the floor-related complaints slip out of mind.

“I can’t sleep now, you’re talking to me and giving me a point to focus on and stay awake.”

“Then I’ll be quiet.” The intruder sits down next to the blanket he just laid out, staring at Sehun expectantly. Sehun hates how he can feel the tendrils of sleep already curling around him as soon as he stops talking, feeling suspiciously like the heat trapping him in.

“Fine. But I don’t like not having a pillow.” Sehun lies down on the piece of cloth, letting out a mental sigh as soon as his back hits the little piece of frozen fabric.

“You can use me. I’ve been told I make a great one.” Without need for another invitation, Sehun scoots up to lay his head on the intruder’s lap. It’s a testament to how tired he is that he actually did that, and another testament to how nice the intruder actually is when he doesn’t immediately shove Sehun’s nasty head off his clean lap, and instead pushes the hair out of Sehun’s face for him.

He opens his eyes barely a peek when he feels the cool embrace of another banket gently drape over him, and the look in the intruder’s eyes is just so…nice... that Sehun feels something click inside of him and then suddenly the sleep is completely driven away, beaten off by too big of a bat, not going to be returning for a little bit.

“Why are you still looking up at me? Close your eyes and go to sleep.” The intruder sounds too annoyed for his expression, and it’s only the bare minimal memory of Sehun’s three manners that keeps him from just rolling off and sitting back up for another few hours.

“I can’t. I’m suddenly too awake.”

“Close your eyes. I said I’ll help you sleep and I won’t leave until I do.” Sehun huffs but follows the instructions, not really expecting anything. Then there’s a soft hand on his head, smoothing his hair in the rhythmic motion he had watched him perform all night, just without a spoon this time. And then soft words flowing from a language Sehun thinks sounds vaguely familiar, Mandarin maybe, comes from the intruder’s mouth, too soft for his harsher tone. The grip of consciousness apparently isn’t as tight as Sehun gave it credit, because then he’s slipping again, finally into the sleep his aching body had been screaming for, falling together straight into a dreamscape that sounds a bit too much like the lullaby the intruder’s still singing.

Sehun wakes up on his mattress at 9am sharp in the middle of the kitchen, with a blanket about three seconds away from falling off his chest and the harrowing realisation that he never asked the intruder for his name.


	2. 1:52

And like after a fever dream, life is still normal. Sehun goes to bed at a normal time, and when he is forced downstairs at 2 am night after night, there’s no one waiting for him in the kitchen. The refrigerated blankets have helped so much since then, but it’s been three nights later and Sehun still hasn’t managed to get more than 10 minutes of sleep at a time, stolen little by little in the many long lulls of the long days in the bookstore.

Four days later, when Sehun finally has a talk with himself on the way back from the bookstore and decides to give up his dignity and body and just move the mattress downstairs so he can sleep on the kitchen floor for good, he finds an ac installed in his bedroom. 

There’s no note, no indication of anyone having been in the house since he left at 9:30, but there’s a whole ac installed, plastic still on the remote and everything. Sehun plugs it in and turns it on, and within seconds, the coolest breeze of air that he’s felt so far this summer blows over him, and Sehun thinks he could cry. 

The air conditioner’s easily the newest thing in the house, barely surpassing the extension cord Sehun bought for his fans before the start of the summer, and it seems to be a model that hit the shelves literally days before. Even more baffling is how everything is already connected, the air, water, electricity, so even when Sehun purposefully reads through the instruction manual to search for something done wrong, he can find no flaw. 

It’s a fucking godsend, and Sehun vows right there and then that if he ever sees the person who gave him this miracle, he would just kiss them straight on the lips and propose. Well, maybe not propose, but he’s going to kiss them, and then thank them for saving his life. 

That night, though cool air swirls around his room in a way that would have breezes during the winter jealous, Sehun keeps feeling like there’s just something he’s waiting for. His eyes aren’t getting tired, and he gives up early and heads downstairs for the kitchen. Maybe he’s hungry. 

Sehun waits on top of his counter, viciously ignoring how his shorts are attaching themselves to him in a way that would be painful to take off, and the fact that he has a perfectly functional ac upstairs, the last few wisps of the cold coming down the stairs. At least he won’t be peeling his skin off the marble instead.

He doesn’t think about why he’s actually sitting here, because that would be admitting that he’s attached, intrigued by a dude who steals and breaks into places he shouldn’t be, and ignores the little thought saying that at least he isn’t a murderer. And he doesn’t even know his name. 

“You don’t like the ac?” Sehun’s heartbeat jumps up several notches because the asshole is right there, pulling open and closing the kitchen door as if it was his own house, strolling in with a squad of mosquitoes, still dressed in all black. 

“You’re the reason I keep getting bitten at home!” Sehun hops off the counter in mock outrage that is edging a bit close to the real thing. He woke up with three new bites on his legs yesterday even though he had literally shoved towels between the cracks of everything just to make sure the kitchen was safe. The stranger gives him an apologetic look that was not at all apologetic enough. 

“Sorry. I thought your mosquito repellent would’ve been enough.” 

Sehun scoffs and as if suddenly activated, the mosquito bites start acting up again and Sehun wishes for the sweet relief of a third degree burn or at the very least, extermination of all mosquitoes on earth. It’s only his pride that keeps him from scratching, and even that is running thin. Hopefully he forgets about it before it comes to the worst.

“But do you not like the ac?” The stranger asks, making a beeline for Sehun’s fridge and pulling out the half-eaten bottle of Nutella that Sehun somehow missed when scouting for breakfast each morning.

“I like it, but why is your Nutella in my fridge? And I locked the door, how did you get in?”

“I like eating it cold.” He doesn’t offer an explanation for the door, however, and Sehun tries to not turn towards the door to check for his keys. “I’m glad you like the ac. It was a pain convincing Fan-ge to install it, but it would’ve been worse for me to do it myself.” 

“You got me the ac? Why?”

“You were clearly suffering. Also you didn’t report me to the police and I appreciate that.” He takes one of Sehun’s spoons out from the utensils holder and uncaps the Nutella, sliding down onto the floor against his cabinets. He doesn’t have his rings on tonight. Sehun has a sudden vision of the intruder lounging against the headboards of his bed at home in the city and blinks rapidly to remove it, because he looked too comfortable there.

“Oh. Thank you.”

The intruder pats the spot next to him, and Sehun slowly lowers himself down, folding his limbs so to keep all stickable skin away from sticky surfaces. 

“Why aren’t you asleep?” 

“Why are you worried?” Sehun counters, feeling his arms getting tired from holding them just above his barely folded up knees. If only his brain could relate.

“It’s very late and you have work in the morning. You shouldn’t be living like this.” For someone who is eating stolen Nutella and just invited himself into a random house, he’s acting very responsible. Sehun scoffs at his concerned expression, unable to take him seriously when he’s using a spoon as a pointer. 

“It’s only 11.”

His intruder gives him the look that Junmyeon usually gives to Jongin when he’s being stupid and Sehun feels his haunches raise in defense, finally understanding why Jongin reacts like even bigger of an idiot. But before he can embarrass himself even more than usual in front of him, the intruder shakes his sleeve down and Sehun is suddenly staring at a genuine, authentic Rolex, costing perhaps more than the kitchen they are sitting in and he forgets words.

“Look,”

“You have a Rolex?” Sehun didn’t feel that it was necessary for him to flex on Sehun this hard, especially when he was hot and sweaty and losing more and more water by the second.

“No, look at the time!” The time is 1 but that isn’t the biggest issue here. The issue here is the fact that this dude who steals stuff from people and acts like he lives in Sehun’s house also has a Rolex that he’s just pulling out on Sehun like an unlimited credit card.

“Yeah yeah, but you have a Rolex.” 

“I stole it from someone because I needed a watch, now can you focus on the time? Why are you still up at 1 am?” The intruder glares at Sehun and Sehun shrugs.

“It was 11 when I sat down.” The intruder rolls his sleeves back down and closes his eyes, emulating an energy that brings Sehun back into Dr. Selbor’s class. Poor man didn’t deserve any of the disrespect but that didn’t stop anyone from giving it to him anyways. “Besides, I’m used to only a few minutes of sleep. I’ve gotten the most sleep I have in years since I came down here.”

That was a fat lie, the most sleep Sehun had ever gotten was five months ago in the hammock strung above the water cooler that he had climbed into during their hide-and-seek game and then fallen asleep for 12 hours, waking up in the middle of the night and prompting the night guard to nearly beat him up.

“Fine. Get up.” He caps his Nutella and gets to his feet, and Sehun notices suddenly his fuzzy black socks. Out of everything so far, this was perhaps the most baffling. How could he just wear fuzzy black socks when Sehun was dying of heat? And where did he put his shoes? Did he wear shoes up to Sehun’s house or did he just walk around in socks? 

“Why are you wearing socks?” Sehun asks, pushing himself up off the floor, eyes focused on the confused expression that passed over his intruder’s face.

“What? Why am I wearing socks?”

“Yeah. Like aren’t you hot at all? Are we living in different climates?” 

“Just because you can’t stand the heat doesn’t mean it’s actually that hot.” Sehun huffs, listening to good points but refusing to hear them. “Go upstairs.” 

“Why? What if I like sitting on the floor of the kitchen?” The intruder’s glare held no bite at all, but Sehun did feel a wave of humiliation wash over him, or maybe it was just heat. He was very aware of the drops of sweat making its way down his back, and knew that there was no use trying to push such a blatant obvious lie.

Sehun turns around and starts walking towards the stairs, feeling better each inch he takes towards the cool air of the air conditioner pouring out of his room like smoke from a fog machine.

“Go take a shower, you’re sweaty.” 

“And what right do you have to tell me that?” Sehun knows exactly what right the intruder has, and doesn’t bother going back to recieve the annoyed glare that was obviously waiting for him. Instead, he grabs a pair of underwear and a tank top from his drawer and hops into the shower, trying his hardest to not think about what the intruder could be doing. 

When he comes out, he finds the intruder on his bed, wrapped up nicely among the blankets as he keeps on eating his Nutella like there’s nothing else to do in the world. 

“What are you doing on my bed?”

“Waiting for you, obviously. You need to sleep.” Sehun tosses the towel he was drying his hair with at the intruder in his bed and gets the same cloth projectile flying back at him. 

“So what are you doing in my bed?” Sehun drops the towel off on the back of a chair as he stares down his stranger, who puts the Nutella on his side-table and pats the place next to him on the nice king bed Sehun had converted for his own. 

“It’s a nice bed. Now aren’t you going to sleep?”

“You’re in it.”

“I don’t see how me in bed is keeping you from sleeping.”

“But we can’t just sleep together.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name, you’re just someone who likes to break into my house a lot.”

“Fine. Huang Zitao, nice to meet you. I don’t even know your name, but go to sleep.”

Sehun slowly moves towards the bed, rolling over the syllables of his name and actions in his head. Wait, why was he actually getting in bed with Zitao just because he now knows his name? But it’s a nice name, Zitao. Sounds Chinese, which would explain why he was singing in Mandarin the last time. 

Sehun slides in between the covers next to Zitao, ignoring his saified hum and the grin growing over his face. He purposefully leaves a bit extra space between them, but there’s only one pillow on the bed and Zitao’s sitting in front of it.

“You have my pillow.” Zitao huffs, then slides the pillow over to his side of the bed, patting it for extra fluffiness. 

“Fine. Now lie down and go to sleep.” 

Sehun does as he’s told, sliding between the cold blankets and resting his head nicely on his pillow. But Zitao’s dark eyes focus on him with such an intensity that makes Sehun simultaneously more awake and nervous at the same time. How can he possibly sleep like this?

“Why are you looking at me?” 

“It’s weird to see you just watching me. It’s also very creepy, what are you going to do when I’m asleep?” Zitao rolls his eyes, picking up the cup of water on the side-table and gulping it all down. Then he lies down as well, moving close enough to Sehun that they’re sharing the admittingly very large pillow.

“I’ll sleep too.”

“Can’t you sleep somewhere else?”

“No. I don’t like sleeping alone, and you’re clearly not going to sleep.” 

“You better not steal the blankets.” Sehun rolls away from Zitao, shutting his eyes, fully expecting to just ignore him and go to sleep to annoy him, conveniently forgetting that’s exactly what Zitao wants. But the presence of heat behind him is too much to ignore, and even though they aren’t touching, Sehun can’t think about anything else but Zitao sleeping behind him. Who is he? Where did he come from? Did his head heal? 

Sensing no sound nor motion from behind him, Sehun makes the inference that Zitao’s already asleep, and that it’ll probably be okay for him to just check on if Zitao’s wound is healed or not. Yeah, that’s okay, after all, he did bandage it. He should be allowed to wonder about it.

As soon as he flips over as softly as he can, Zitao’s eyes open again, giving him a displeased look.

“Why aren’t you sleeping yet?”

“I don’t usually sleep with someone else.” That was also a lie, but Zitao doesn’t need to know that. Instead, Zitao nods slightly as if acknowledging the fact, but makes no move to move away from Sehun, just pulling the blanket higher to his neck. 

Sehun spends a few seconds staring into Zitao’s terrifyingly still and unblinking eyes, feeling that this should not at all be what he’s doing. After spending all of those seconds feeling awkward and hyping himself up at the same time, he pulls one arm out of the blankets to brush Zitao's hair away from his wound. Like he had suspected a few days ago, it was just mostly scraped off skin, and it was healing nicely. The new skin was a bit lighter and pinker than the rest, but it was healing.

“Did you worry about me?” Zitao’s lips didn’t even move properly, slurring vowels instead of words, but Sehun still heard him loud and clear. When he looks down into Zitao’s eyes, they’re traveling over Sehun’s face, and Sehun can feel the gentle brush over his features, the touch of the eyeballs.

“No.”

Zitao doesn’t muffle the little ha that comes out, and Sehun frowns, disliking how Zitao already manages to see through all his words with a level of familiarity that took Junmyeon the majority of their one year as college roommates to reach. He draws his arm back and Zitao looks into his eyes properly.

“Go to sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Well, you'll never be tired if you don’t close your eyes.” Sehun doesn’t try to argue anymore, but just closes his eyes. There’s a gentle shuffling before a hand is gently tracing along his face, following the lines, but going off them more than not. Sehun wants to open his eyes and ask who’s really worrying about who, but the moment is too gentle to break, breathless like his touches. Only when Zitao retracts his hand does Sehun open his eyes again. 

Zitao doesn’t look at angry or annoyed that Sehun’s still awake, but it’s more of a acceptance that Sehun isn’t just going to go to sleep because his eyes are closed and a stranger is tracing over his face.

“Oh Sehun.”

“Hm?”

“My name. My name’s Oh Sehun.” 

“Hunnie.” 

“Sehun.”

“Hunnie.”

“Sehun.”

“I’ll let you call me a nickname too, but you’re Hunnie.”

“What kind of a nickname can you even get from Zitao?”

“A lot of my friends call me Taozi, but you can just call me Tao.” 

“Fine.” 

Zitao looks over his face again curiously, as if there was still more for him to discover from looking at Sehun, again and again and again. Why does he do that instead of like sleeping on his own or anything?

“What will it take for you to get tired?” Zitao finally asks, settling his eyes back on Sehun’s.

“I dunno. Bore me.”

“I can’t. I’m the most interesting person you’ll ever meet. Next.”

“Wow. I don’t know how I go to sleep, I just know that I usually can’t unless I’m very tired or bored.” 

“Want me to tire you out then?” 

Sehun tries his best imitation of Baekhyun's suspicious one eyebrow lift. 

“How?” 

As if he was just waiting for this one cue, Zitao sits up, pushing the blankets off of himself and holding a hand out to pull Sehun up.

“Just follow me.”

Zitao drags Sehun outside, barely waiting long enough for Sehun to do his bug repellent routine before he’s pulling him along the streets of this little town, all bare and empty without anyone else awake at this time. Zitao did have shoes afterall, having left them outside, and he had barely stepped in them before he was taking Sehun’s hand and pulling him along. Even though they were slowed to a brisk stroll, Zitao still had his hand in a death grip. It wasn’t all bad though. Zitao’s hand was smooth and soft like he had spent a long time moisturising, and his fingers, long and thin, threading around Sehun’s like they were meant to be there. 

There was only so much you can walk before you run out of town and end up on beach, being a little place full of nothing but hotels and diners and only one bookstore. It exists purely as a little tourist retreat, coming to life only in summer with the people wishing to visit the beach. But this late, at 2 am, no one else exists besides Sehun and the hand pulling him along, attached to a person that Sehun is even less convinced is real at this time.

It’s cool, a little nice breeze rivaling Sehun’s ac washing over them with each step they take. If he wasn’t too scared of tripping, he would probably have closed his eyes, let Zitao take him wherever, no need to know the destination as long as he can truly feel the journey. But the thought of having a matching wound with Zitao keeps him from closing his eyes like how he wants to, and he keeps a hard eye out for any rocks or walls and another on the way Zitao turns back once in awhile with a smile, beckoning him on.

They walk out onto the beach, brilliantly lit by the full moon up ahead. But instead of leading him to the water, Zitao keeps him moving until they’ve reach a crook of beach that Sehun’s never seen before, hidden away by some boulders that make a nice cave-like structure, only not leading anywhere made of stone.

“What are we doing here?” Sehun asks when Zitao drops his hand and reaches for the bottom of his turtleneck, slipping fingers underneath what looks like soft cloth with a snake-like ease of motion, hypnotizing. 

“What do you think?” Zitao pulls the sweater over his neck and smiles at him with his hair all ruffled and messy. Sehun wonders if it’s his heart that skipped a beat or if it was the waves. “We’re going swimming.”

“What?”

“I’m going to assume you swim, since you said that you came to this town a lot when you were a kid, and everyone knows the best thing to do with kids during the summer is to teach them to swim so they can occupy themselves and stop bothering you from your game of cards.” Zitao’s stepping out of his shoes and pants, neatly throwing them into a pile on the sand. “Well, you know how to swim, right?” 

“Yeah.” Sehun nods, watching in disbelief as Zitao takes off his socks, trying his hardest from running his eyes over Zitao appreciatively. He doesn’t succeed.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“We can’t just go swimming now. It’s late.” Zitao fixes him with another disbelieving stare as he starts unbuckling the Rolex, fiddling with the strap.

“I said I’d tire you out, and who’s there to stop us? Race you to the water.” Then Zitao takes off, running towards the water, leaving Sehun sputtering in disbelief.

“You cheater! Yah!” Sehun scrambles to pull off his tank top, throwing his shoes off as Zitao runs into the surf, diving into the water with a ease that can only be practiced. 

He surfaces next to Sehun, tossing his hair out of his eyes and pushing the water off his face. Sehun barely gets enough time to breathe before Zitao gets a very suspicious smile on his face, and then he’s pushing Sehun under, going down together. 

Sehun had automatically closed his eyes as soon as Zitao touched him, and under the shallow water, he could see the way the moon dances across the sky next to the stars. Zitao’s hands were fixed on his shoulders as he grinned wider than Sehun had ever seen anyone grin, pushing him down with the weight of his body. 

And even though the water was cold, the night was warm and alive with the sound of nature living. Finally, Sehun thought that if he was to just spend a summer here in this little town without anything, that he might as well throw himself head first it like how Zitao headbutted him into the water, and dives into what he didn’t let himself touch. 

Sehun didn’t think that he had been this happy in a long time, as he splashed and raced and played around with Zitao like they weren’t working, functional adults, and were just happy and carefree like all the kids who come to the beach on vacation are. And finally, when he finally take a moment to try and catch his breath, feeling the beginning of the blossom of what is known best to him as exhaustion, Zitao’s also there, floating on his back, resting on the bed provided to them naturally, opening his eyes to the stars. 

Sehun joins him, fingertips reaching out, just far enough to be able to feel Zitao floating along next to him, as they watch the way the heavens shift around the little ball of water and rock they spin on. But yet they don’t fall.

But instead of asking about the heavens, Zitao asks something else.

“Are you tired yet?”

Sehun certainly was tired, but if he said so, then he would break the spell and Zitao would force him back to bed. “It’s just so beautiful.”

Zitao’s hand stops brushing against his body but instead reaches for his own, joining them together to keep Sehun from floating off. 

Sehun turns his head slightly to Zitao at the sound of an object breaking through the film of the water, and takes in a breath. Before he can do much else, Zitao’s pushing him down into the water, sinking down, lips joined by the stroke of luck which is Zitao was remarkably accurate in flopping over onto him like a bad starfish. Sehun kisses back, feeling the cool water soak through them, and the breathlessness of having no air to breathe, yet thinking that he doesn’t quite need to breathe if he’s kissing Zitao like this.

Eventually they break the shallow surface for air, and between the lights shining from the water droplets in Zitao’s hair is the moon reflected in his eyes, big and white and so bright. Zitao drapes his arms around Sehun and Sehun pulls him in, seeking another kiss how they had sought air seconds ago. 

“We should go home.” Zitao mentions when they break this kiss, and Sehun’s glad to see that his hair is messed up enough and that his eyes aren’t as sharp as they were seconds ago.

“No, this is perfect.” Sehun convinces him with another kiss, and Zitao grudgingly nods, pulling him in closer until Sehun thinks that there’s not even enough space to breathe. 

And when they finally run back through the streets of the little town that isn’t large enough to fully contain Sehun for more than a few lingering weeks, shrieking with laughter as they make their way back into the safety and coolness of Sehun’s house, Sehun thinks that this was exactly what he was waiting for, falling asleep with kisses lingering on his skin and Zitao trapped in his arms, tasting like the Nutella he eats too much.


	3. 12:11

A week later, Sehun lays in bed, at peace. It’s the silent hour again in which the world doesn’t move besides the air conditioner running and the bugs chirping, and if it was just a bit quieter, he would hear himself breathe.

He doesn’t look at the clock again, since he’s already glanced at it too many times, and instead listens to the ticking inside his head, slowly counting down the seconds like the seconds hand on a clock, filling up the quietness of his brain settling down. 12:09 and 6 seconds, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

There’s another faint sound, barely drowned out by the air conditioning, of movement in his house. Steps walking themselves up the barely creaking stairs, and stepping on all the floorboards that won’t creak. Even the way the door gently knocks back against the frame is gentle, and Sehun doesn’t bother opening his eyes even as he hears the gentle clinking of metal against metal, not as soft as the other sound before.

“You’re 11 minutes late.” 

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to see how Zitao scoffs next to his bedside table, rings in hand as he pulls them off one by one. But he still does, because it’s always nice to have a visual, especially when the visual is about to start stripping. 

God, he hates Zitao’s thing with rings even if he looks so good with them on. The jerk’s been wearing as many as he can ever since Sehun told him frankly six days ago that wearing them to bed was weird, which possessed Zitao to arrive every night covered in rings and then spend a ridiculous amount of time taking them off. It’s so annoying to watch him take them off one by one, but the time before when they’re flashing around, emphasising how long and thin his fingers are, make up for it. 

“There was traffic.”

“At midnight?” Zitao drops his rings onto the bedside table and pulls his shirt off, tossing it onto the chair that everything’s ultimately tossed on, rolling his eyes as he unbuckles his pants.

“Shut up. I work so hard to provide the best life I can for you and this is how I get treated.” The pants hit the chair and Zitao climbs into bed, Sehun scooting over just the slightest bit for him. “Not even a greeting when I come home and insults at the door.”

“This isn’t your house.” Sehun grumbles, waiting for Zitao to get comfortable and to finally stop shuffling around the blankets, so he can wraps his arms around him. “How do you even get in? I lock the door!”

Zitao decides to instead just get comfortable on his chest, and before Sehun can start complaining about how heavy Zitao is - all that food he eats does have to go somewhere - Zitao lays his lips on his own and Sehun drinks him in, the sweetness of Zitao mixed with just the slightest trace of Nutella.

“Then can I get keys so you can stop bothering me about this?” Sehun thinks about the new set of keys that he had just copied at the locksmith and how he had placed them behind the first aid kit in his closet, and wonders if Zitao had found them. That was supposed to be his surprise, dammit! Zitao better be just really good at coincidences because Sehun’s going to have to throw the keys out if he does know, purely to not prove Zitao right.

“You were 11 minutes late.” Zitao huffs, looking away from Sehun’s eyes as he burrows his head into Sehun’s chest, probably because they both know Sehun better than that. 

“I can still get in anyways.” 

“Don’t.”

“If you don’t get me keys, then I’m going to have to enter whether you know how or not.” There’s little warm puffs of air on Sehun’s chest as Zitao breathes and speaks, yet Sehun somehow can’t find it in him to care.

“Fine. I’ll get you keys on one condition.”

“Hmm?”

“I want to see you during the day. It’s weird that I’ve never seen you under the sun.” 

“So you want to see how I look in the sun? Well, the moon is nice, but natural sunlight can be far superior at times.”

“Jerk.”

Zitao laughs, before moving his head back to the pillow to properly look into Sehun’s eyes. No matter how many times he’s seen them, they always look like they’re holding the moon, all round and bright and brilliantly mysterious at the same time.

“Yeah. I’ll visit you at work tomorrow, so you better get me some keys.”

Zitao pecks his cheek in a teasing way and Sehun glares at him until Zitao gives him a proper kiss. Maybe he shouldn’t give him the keys for a few days, tease him a little too.

“Just go to sleep.” Sehun closes his eyes first, but he still feels the gentle way Zitao shakes with giggles while he lays little kisses across Sehun’s face, given while Zitao’s sure that Sehun’s not yet gone. It’s only after a few minutes that he’s finally sated, resting his head on the pillow where it belongs and not spreading butterfly kisses around Sehun’s face..

“Fine. Goodnight Hunnie. I’ve known you for 11 days but you still don’t trust me enough to give me keys.”

Sehun mentally rolls his eyes but his body cuddles into Zitao just a bit more, being that it’s just the right bit of warmth and soothed. He can feeling himself going under, and just obeys the wishes of the nighttime. “Goodnight. Can’t wait to see how bad you look during the day.”

Sehun might’ve gotten nudged in the arm for that, but he honestly did deserve it. And then, next to the intruder who broke into his house and stole his heart, Sehun finally falls asleep.


End file.
